Early Retirement

Introduction | Session Report | Comments

Introduction

After our first game of A Weekend in the Country (Second Edition) by Lari Assmuth, we mulled over how to extend the game’s life. We’ve played it several times now in its native form, investigating the murder of Lord Adler on his country estate in old-timey England. This session, though, we experimented with porting the game to a different setting and victim. We used the Mythic GM Emulator’s event meaning tables to produce random subject/action pairs to prompt our changes.

Author’s Description: Spend a weekend relaxing in the Adlers’ country home with the old cavalry colonel, his wife, his family friends and his staff. Until… a murderer strikes!

This session: Spend a weekend relaxing at a corporate retreat on a remote tropical island as everyone learns to embrace recent major changes at Crypto Consolidated. Until… a murderer strikes!

Session Report

Dramatis Personae

Victim

Yves Smith, prominent board member of Crypto Consolidated

Suspects

Taki (K♦), Crypto Consolidated shareholder

Millie (Q♥), former CEO of a company recent bought out by Crypto Consolidated

Gene (J♠), fellow Crypto Consolidated board member

Regina (Q♣), longtime Crypto Consolidated employee

Detectives

Flycatcher Detective Agency, operated by twins Ursa and Ned Flycatcher, whose slogan is, “You catch more flies with us!” Yves Smith invited them to the corporate retreat because he worried there might be corporate espionage afoot. Turns out, things were more serious than that…

Locations

Conference Room, Bedroom Suites, Jungle, Pool Yard, Cantina

Clues

1. Suites/5♦: Ned searches the murder scene, the victim’s room, and realizes something is missing: a USB stick holding a valuable NFT. He recalls that Taki has mentioned an interest in NFTs…

2. Cantina/9♣: Ursa hangs out in the cantina, listening to the rumors flying among the guests. Some people are talking about hearing angry shouts and the sounds of fighting last night. There are suggestions that Regina was involved. Some people think of her as assertive, others as hot-headed. 

3. Conference Rooms/7♠: Ned pokes around the boardroom where meetings were held yesterday. He finds angry doodles on a memo pad near where Gene was sitting. 

4. Pool Yard/2♥: In a trash can, Ursa finds printouts of suggestive emails. The address is clearly an alias, not a personal account. Were they in the trash because someone rejected the advances? Or was the resort staff just cleaning the area?

5. Jungle/3♠: Ned takes a walk in the jungle to think. He flips through the memo pads from the conference room and finds one with messages in multiple handwritings. One says, “Y’s not gonna make it to retirement.” Another says, “Y’s he got to be in charge?”

6. Conference Rooms/10♣: Ursa investigates the breakout rooms around the boardroom. Along one side, they have doors out to the pool yard. She finds a red smudge on one such door. It’s not lipstick, and it’s not ketchup. No, it’s blood.

Because we have 6 clues, it is now possible that there will be another murder, since we roll 2d6 and add the number of clues as our threat mechanic. We get 12, which is less than the murder trigger of 18, so we’re safe for now. But we narrate this new phase of the game by saying that people are starting to take more notice of the Flycatchers’ actions and are whispering about them.

7. Cantina/4♣: It’s Ned’s turn to eavesdrop in the cantina. He overhears that witnesses spotted both Regina and Taki near Yves’s suite last night. 

8. Jungle/5♣: Ursa suggests she and her brother lay low in the jungle for a bit to give the killer time to make a mistake. But while out there, the pair discover a blood trail that they trace back to the pool.

At this point, we have a pair of fives. That’s pretty weak, and we are only one card away from some better hands. An ace or a six will give us a straight. Or even better, a club will give us a flush. So although we could accuse now, we decide not to. We get a 13 on the threat check.

9. Pool Yard/8♣: Ned investigates the pool area for more blood. He finds a piece of equipment with blood on it that fits a small wound on Yves’s body. The Flycatchers realize Yves was killed here and later moved to his room.

Accusation

With a club flush, we present our case. Regina and Yves argued last night about what the merger would mean for retirement packages. That happened in the conference breakout room. The fight spilled out into the pool yard, where she struck him with a piece of equipment. Before he died, he crawled away into the jungle, trying to escape. Regina moved the corpse to Yves’s suite so that someone else would be blamed. 

When we confront Regina, she claims she is innocent. Her defense is a pair of tens. Regina offers Gene for her alibi, saying they were playing cards together last night, but when questioned, Gene says the game ended at ten. There was still plenty of time for Regina to have committed the murder. “Things were better before this merger happened!” she cries as she is cuffed. “You mean before this murder happened,” the Flycatchers correct her.

Club flush beats a pair of tens.
Accusation and Defense

Comments

We were quite pleased with how this adaptation went. We had thought we might need to use the Mythic tables during play to help us modify clues to fit into the new setting and scenario, but we were able to do just fine without consulting it further. If you’re interested in how we settled on this corporate setting, it was from rolling Truce and Investment on the Mythic tables. We also randomly drew our four new suspects, pulling each from just the royalty for that suit.